


399. frozen heart

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [176]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Frozen (2013) Fusion, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8972848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: (Helena didn’t build herself a castle. She wouldn’t have thought of it. Castles are for princesses, and queens. Not for Helena. This is not that kind of story.)





	

i.

It was summer until it wasn’t. There was sunshine and now there isn’t, the entire kingdom blanketed in snow, and Sarah is still standing at the edge of the frozen lake and watching Helena run, and run, and run.

ii.

Helena did all sorts of things with her powers, when she was young, but what she mostly remembers is Hurting Sarah. Sarah falling. The streak of blonde in Sarah’s hair. The cold, the snow, all the power in Helena that could Hurt Sarah and could not ever be used.

Helena is cold all the time; she has seasons and seasons of winters inside of her. She shivers. But she can hear Sarah pacing through the hallways of the castle – Sarah isn’t frozen still, not like Helena is. Sarah is fine. Helena’s hair eats itself alive with frost, starting at the tips and going upwards towards her skull, but there’s only one streak of blonde in Sarah’s hair. Sarah is fine. Sarah is _fine_.

iii.

“She’s my sister,” Sarah tells Cal.

“She doesn’t have anybody,” Sarah tells Cal.

“I have to get her,” Sarah tells Cal. “It’s my fault she’s like this.”

“What,” Cal says, “you curse her or something?”

“No,” Sarah says. “I just—” she lets out a frustrated sigh, and whether it’s because of their conversation or because she just sunk deep into the snow is anyone’s guess. “She’s my twin, yeah? I was supposed to look out for her. I was so bloody – _obsessed_ with getting out of the bloody castle that I didn’t even notice when she locked herself in her bloody _room_. Thought she was just institutionalized. Thought she just liked it in the stupid _locked bloody castle_ too much and then the one time she lets herself out she _panics_ and—” Sarah runs out of breath, but she doesn’t need it. The landscape speaks for itself in a blank white tongue.

“So I have to find her,” Sarah says, voice quiet and determined. “I have to bring her home.”

iv.

Helena tries building herself friends, but they all come out wrong. They won’t stay soft; they grow peaks of ice in their snow-bodies like claws and stingers and knives. They speak in frostbite-voices. They are all too sharp.

 _You’re better off alone anyways, kiddo_ , they tell her, their hisses like a quiet death by cold. _Nobody wants you down there. Sarah didn’t even notice when you locked your door. What makes you think she’d notice you now?_

“Stop,” she says, “stop, stop,” but they don’t. It gets even colder. The snow drifts around Helena get higher and higher, until all she can see is white.

v.

(Helena didn’t build herself a castle. She wouldn’t have thought of it. Castles are for princesses, and queens. Not for Helena. This is not that kind of story.)

vi.

One of Helena’s snow-beasts finds Sarah and Cal in the middle of a copse of trees. It has eyes of black coal, and they don’t shine quite right.

 _Go home_ , it says, and its ice-tail shines in the lack of sun. _Turn back. Give up_. It’s too sharp to touch, all coal and sharp angles. Sarah doesn’t even try to touch it. Instead she squares her shoulders, glares at it. “Where’s Helena.”

 _Gone_ , says the snow-beast. _Not coming back._

“She has to stop the winter,” says Cal. The snow-beast rattles, like icicles knocking against each other in the wind, and Sarah takes another step forward before it can run.

“Please,” she says. “Take me to my sister.”

The snow-beast shudders, and shivers, and does.

vii.

The snow is soft, and

it’s cold, but

Helena is used to the cold. Helena has been used to the cold for a very long time. So she lets the snow bury her, higher and higher and higher, so close around her it’s almost like being touched. If she holds very still it settles around her, tight like being held. She closes her eyes. The world is silent.

Until it isn’t: there are boots crunching in the snow, and someone saying _you still don’t know how to walk in this?_ and someone else saying _shut up we can’t all be bloody lumberjacks_ only that second someone isn’t a someone at all, it’s Sarah. Helena’s sister.

The snow explodes away from Helena, whirls itself into shapes and then is gone again. And there is Helena, sitting small, and there is Sarah standing over her. One bit of hair has escaped from her hat and it curls, blonde and shining, around the edge of her face.

“Helena,” she says, voice cracking at the edges with relief. “Hey, there you are.”

“Yes,” Helena says, voice quiet. There are all sorts of things she wants to say, cruel things, and they are snowflakes in her hands and they are gone.

“You ready to come home?” Sarah says. Helena is.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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